MulteFire™ (MF) is an access technology that is designed to bring the benefits of LTE technology to unlicensed spectrum, e.g. at 5 GHz. Different deployment scenarios for MF are being investigated. One aspect of MF is denoted the “Standalone Deployment Scenario with External Interworking” which can also be called Neutral Host (NH) deployment.
A Neutral Host, NH, may be an entity which typically has premises and wireless infrastructure, such as an airport, a building complex or a warehouse. The NH is not normally seen as a Mobile Network Operator, MNO.
One role of MulteFire™ network is to provide IP services. In this case, the standalone MulteFire™ Network is connected to external entities. The NH may offer services to customers such as Internet access via MulteFire™. The access technology may be any other access technology such as for instance LTE, or LTE-unlicensed.
An MNO and NH may share a business interest in offering the IP services of the NH to MNO customers, that is, offer IP services in a fluent manner, without requiring any special logging in for the customer, thus saving licensed bandwidth of the MNO network. Many Wi-Fi networks of NH's requires logging in and registration before the user can use them.
FIG. 1 depicts such a deployment scenario of a MulteFire™ network that can interact with external Authentication, Authorization and Accounting, AAA, servers of Participating Service Provider(s). For the case when the Participating Service Provider is a Mobile Network Operator, MNO, SIM based credentials are used. In other cases, other type of credentials can also be used.
The MF CN may be connected to an IP network that is also connected to a 3GPP EPC and in this way provide access to its subscribers to Mobile Network Operator's (MNO's) IP Services. However, in this deployment scenario this is a service of 3GPP EPC and not provided by the MulteFire™ network.
Typically, the dotted line between a UE and an MNO is realized by IKE (Internet Key Exchange)/IPsec (IP Security) using the non-3GPP untrusted access solution (3GPP TS23.402 V13.4.0 (2015-12)).